Activation of action rules in action observation.

Visually perceiving an action may activate corresponding motor programs. This automatic motor activation can occur both for higher level (i.e., the goal of an action) and for lower level (i.e., the specific effector with which it is executed) aspects of an action. The authors used a tool-use action paradigm to experimentally dissociate priming effects for observing the target, the movement, or the target-to-movement mapping of a tool-use action. In 3 experiments, participants took turns in acting, observing the tool-use action of another person in trial n-1, and executing an action in trial n. Trial transitions from n-1 to n were manipulated in 4 conditions with (a) mapping repeated and movement and target changed, (b) target repeated and movement and mapping changed, (c) movement repeated and target and mapping changed, or (d) all components repeated. Results indicate priming effects for repeating the target-to-movement mapping (i.e., the action rule) of a tool-use action and suggest that a rather abstract action schema is activated during action observation. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Large scale transmission network planning using optimization andheuristic techniques

Pursuing optimal solutions for large scale transmission network planning problems is a formidable task due to their combinatorial nature and also due to the nonconvexities involved. Successful approaches using hierarchical Benders decomposition incur in a high computational cost mainly due to the need to solve a large integer program (the investment sub-problem) for every Benders iteration. In this work the authors propose to use heuristics within the decomposition framework, therefore avoiding to solve to optimality each integer sub-problem. The global computational effort is substantially reduced, and allows coping with large problems that would be intractable using classical combinatorial techniques. Case studies with the 6 bus Garver test system and a reduced Southeastern Brazilian power network are presented and discussed     

Sexual disorders: demographic and diagnostic profile during one year of a multidisciplinary project

Taking into consideration a study published 10 years ago on sexual disturbances of students at the University of S?o Paulo, the importance of the subject is discussed, along with the creation in 1993 of the Sexuality Project at the university hospital of the University of S?o Paulo School of Medicine. In its first year, this multidisciplinary project attended 140 patients with sexual dysfunctions (associated or not to other clinical manifestations); the majority were younger than 60 years-old, and 80 percent were male.     

Losses of volatile compounds during fermentation

The ability of fermentative CO₂ to blow off the volatile compounds that are synthesized during fermentation has been studied. Model solutions simulating a fermenting must were purged at different CO₂ flow rates and temperatures, and the amount of volatile compounds blown off by the stream of CO₂ was recorded by high-resolution gas chromatography. Data showed that under normal fermenting conditions, fatty acid ethyl esters and some fusel alcohol acetates are blown off the solution at a high rate. The maximum loss rate was observed for ethyl decanoate. The purging speed is doubled when temperature increases from 17 °C to 27 °C. Losses can be interpreted by a linear model and are a function of the compound and the flow rate of CO₂. These models allow us to reconstruct the volatile synthesis vs time functions through graphic calculus and to estimate the proportion of volatile material retained, hydrolysed and purged. Synthesis takes place during the tumultuous period of fermentation together with CO₂ production that blows off the volatile material. Hydrolysis takes place in the last stages of fermentation. In a 10-1 open fermenter, up to 80% of volatile material can be blown off while an average of 10% is retained. Residual esterase activity accounts for about 20% of the total amount of ester synthesized.     

Drying of Chestnuts (Castanea sativa Mill.) after Osmotic Dehydration with Sucrose and Glucose Solutions

Chestnuts were dehydrated by using a combined method of osmotic dehydration followed by air drying. Samples were osmotically pretreated with sucrose (60% w/w) and glucose (56% w/w) for 8 h, air-dried at temperatures of 45, 55, and 65°C, at a relative humidity of 30% and at a velocity of 2.7 m·s^-1 and the experimental data of the drying kinetics were obtained. Whole samples were dried with different peelings: (a) removal of endocarp and pericarp (peeled) and (b) additionally the internal rough surface (cut). In all cases, cut chestnuts show greater drying rates than peeled samples, indicating that a significant mass transfer resistance in the layer nearest to the surface takes place. Peeled samples pretreated with sucrose solutions behave in a similar way to untreated samples. For the rest of the samples, the cut samples osmotically treated with sucrose solutions and all the samples treated with the glucose solution, the drying rates decrease during drying. Drying kinetics are successfully modeled by employing a diffusional model that takes the shrinkage into account. The effective coefficient of water diffusion was evaluated and correlated with temperature. The quality of the final product was monitored by color change. In spite of the fact that the total color difference is not modified by the osmotic treatment, the L*, a*, and b* color coordinates of cut samples treated with sucrose and glucose solutions do undergo changes; the L* and a* coordinates change less than the b*.     

Gas Permeability of Wetwood and Normal Wood of Subalpine Fir in Relation to Drying

Subalpine fir (Abies lasiocarpa Hook) lumber containing wetpockets (wetwood) was used for the measurements of gas permeability and the results were then compared to the gas permeability of normal wood, which was free of the wetpockets. The impacts of pretreatment methods were also investigated, including steaming at green condition, steaming at fiber saturation point (FSP), microwave treatment, and radio-frequency treatment. Results from this study demonstrated that both the transverse and the longitudinal gas permeability of subalpine fir wetwood are greater than that of normal wood. There is no significant change in the permeability after 4-h steaming pretreatment at green condition and at FSP. The impacts of microwave and radio-frequency pretreatments were not significant, but the findings cannot be generalized because they may depend on the power intensity applied.     

The surgical treatment of acute myocardial infarct in the 90s]

At present, the treatment for acute myocardial infarction is revascularization during the critical initial period of six hours after the beginning of coronary occlusion. Despite the fact that surgery performed within this time period presents a hospital of mortality around 2%, and with excellent results in the long term, it is seldom used due to logistic limitations and capabilities of hospital infrastructures, high costs and the possibility of the surgical team initiating surgery inside the useful time period. Surgery is thus limited to the patients with suitable anatomy, who are not candidates or had failure of thrombolytic/angioplasty therapy and are in the six-hour period after initiation of symptoms. Surgery performed at a later stage has good results if performed in a non emergency situation, specially after the first 72 hours. Surgery continues to be the only treatment for the mechanical complications of infarction, and good results have recently been shown in ventricular septal ruptures, with hospital mortality of 14%, due to the use of an endoventricular patch in patients operated early, before the consequences of low cardiac output develop at systemic level. In the surgical treatment of mitral regurgitation, the tendency has been to use repair techniques whenever possible, but still with hospital mortality up to 15%. The recent advances of the techniques and tactics of myocardial preservation during surgery have made a very significant contribution to the better results we see today.     

Inter-observer agreement in analysis of basal body temperature graphs from infertile women

In this study, we evaluated the reproducibility of analysis of basal body temperature graphs under optimized conditions for agreement. A total of 160 recordings were selected from spontaneous cycles of infertile women and analysed by three experienced clinicians using uniform criteria. Agreement at the various stages of analysis was assessed by the 'proportions of agreement' with 95% confidence intervals. Agreement in identification of the thermal nadir was clearly superior to that reported in previous publications. Reproducibility of 'ovulatory' graph features (i.e. biphasic graphs and adequate thermal shifts) was excellent. Agreement in classification of monophasic graphs and inadequate thermal shifts, although lower, was still good. Thus, with experienced observers and uniform criteria, a good agreement can be achieved in analysis of the most important parameters of the basal body temperature graph. We believe that an effort should be made to generalize the use of uniform analysis criteria, because only then can results from different institutions be compared and the remaining clinical evaluation of the method be performed.     

A new approach to predict ulcerative colitis activity through standard clinical–biological parameters using a robust neural network model

Neural Computing and Applications - Colonoscopy is the “gold” standard for evaluating disease activity in ulcerative colitis (UC). An important area of research is finding a...     

Gain‐scheduled dynamic output feedback control for discrete‐time LPV systems

This paper presents synthesis conditions for the design of gain‐scheduled dynamic output feedback controllers for discrete‐time linear parameter‐varying systems. The state‐space matrix representation of the plant and of the controller can have a homogeneous polynomial dependency of arbitrary degree on the scheduling parameter. As an immediate extension, conditions for the synthesis of a multiobjective ??_∞ and ??₂ gain‐scheduled dynamic feedback controller are also provided. The scheduling parameters vary inside a polytope and are assumed to be a priori unknown, but measured in real‐time. If bounds on the rate of parameter variation are known, they can be taken into account, providing less conservative results. The geometric properties of the uncertainty domain are exploited to derive finite sets of linear matrix inequalities based on the existence of a homogeneous polynomially parameter‐dependent Lyapunov function. An application of the control design to a realistic engineering problem illustrates the benefits of the proposed approach. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.